Read This: William J. McGee’s New Book on the Descent of the Airlines

William J. McGee’s Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—And How to Reclaim Our Skies comes out today. Just don’t wave it in front of your no-so-friendly TSA screeners.

Need a book for your next flight? William J. McGee’s Attention All Passengers: The Airlines’ Dangerous Descent—And How to Reclaim Our Skies comes out today. Just don’t wave it in front of your no-so-friendly TSA screeners. Attention is a hard-hitting, riveting exposé of all manner of aviation ills, some we experience on a regular basis and some you might not know about, including the dangers of the trend of outsourcing maintenance. But this isn't just griping and fluff: McGee is a serious journalist; he’s won many awards, edited the Consumer Reports Travel Letter, and has written for Condé Nast Travelerin the past as well. At the book party in Manhattan last night, McGee reminisced about his exhaustive research, which took him, among other places, to the call centers of India and a lost-luggage warehouse in Alabama. He spoke to members of Congress, airline mechanics and Department of Homeland Security whistleblowers, and even sat down with the infamous Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who enjoyed a mercifully brief turn as a folk hero for quitting his job via a plane’s emergency chute. As McGee tells it, when he challenged Slater on whether he appreciated how dangerous it is to deploy a chute (it could have killed someone on the ground), the interview quickly headed south. Now that sounds like something we want to read.